In Middle Eastern Culture,

it was  considered a cultural norm to take care of the strangers and foreigners living among you. These norms are reflected in many Biblical commands and examples.[1]

Perhaps the most extreme example is provided in Genesis. Lot provides hospitality to a group of angels (who he thinks are only men); when a mob tries to rape them, Lot goes so far as to offer his own daughters as a substitute, saying "Don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof." (Genesis 19:8, NIV).

The obligations of both guests are stern. The bond is formed by eating salt under the roof, and is so strict that an Arab story tells of a thief who tasted something to see if it was sugar, and on realizing it was salt, put back all that he had taken and left.

     Jupiter and Mercury in the house of Philemon and Baucis, Adam Elsheimer, c1608, Dresden.

Baucis and Philemon

In Ovid's moralizing fable (Metamorphoses VIII), which stands on the periphery of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Baucis and Philemon were an old married couple in the region of Tyana, in Phrygia, and the only ones in their town to welcome disguised gods Zeus and Hermes (in Roman mythology, Jupiter and Mercury respectively), thus embodying the pious exercise of hospitality, the ritualized guest-friendship - xenia.

Zeus and Hermes came disguised as ordinary peasants and began asking the people of the town for a place to sleep that night. They were rejected by all before they came to Baucis and Philemon's rustic and simple cottage. Though the couple were poor, they showed more piety than their rich neighbors, where were "all the doors bolted and no word of kindness given, so wicked were the people of that land."

After serving the two guests food and wine, which Ovid depicts with pleasure in the details, Baucis noticed that although she had refilled her guest's beech wood cups many times, the wine pitcher was still full. Realizing that her guests were in fact gods, she and her husband "raised their hands in supplication and implored indulgence for their simple home and fare."

Philemon thought of catching and killing the goose that guarded their house and making it into a meal for the guests. But when Philemon went to catch the goose, it ran onto Zeus's lap for safety. Zeus said that they did not need to slay the goose and that they should leave the town. Zeus said that he was going to destroy the town and all the people who had turned him away and not provided due hospitality. He said Baucis and Philemon should climb the mountain with him and not turn back until they reached the top.

After climbing the mountain, an arrow shot from the summit.  Baucis and Philemon looked back on the town and saw that it had been destroyed by a flood. However, Zeus had turned Baucis and Philemon's cottage into an ornate temple. The couple was also granted a wish; they chose to stay together forever and to be guardians of the temple. They also requested that when it came time for one of them to die, the other would die as well. Upon their death, they were changed into an intertwining pair of trees, one oak and one linden, standing in the deserted boggy terrain.

Baucis and Philemon do not appear elsewhere in Greek myth, or anywhere in cult, but the sacred nature of hospitality was widespread in the ancient world.

After Abraham and Sarah had feasted them, two strangers were revealed as "two angels" (Genesis 19:1).

Hebrews 13:2, converts hospitality stories into a virtue injunction: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."

The possibility that unidentified strangers in need of hospitality were gods in disguise was ingrained in first century culture. Acts 14:11-12 relates the ecstatic reception received by Paul of Tarsus and Barnabas: "The crowds shouted 'The gods have come down to us in human form!' Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes".